God’s Determination
Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-28; 31:31-34

Determination is an admirable character trait. Determination is the fixed or firm intention to achieve a desired end. We have a rather vivid example of determination playing out before us in the continuing saga of the 2020 presidential election. President Trump is determined to prove that the election was stolen from him through systemic voter fraud. Former Vice-President Biden is determined that he is the President-elect. Both men have a firm intention to achieve their desired end: to become the forty-sixth President of the United States of America. They are doing everything in their power to ensure the desired outcome. Again, such active, intentional determination is a positive character trait in human beings.

But determination can also be defined in a more passive sense, that is, simply as a direction or a tendency to a certain end. A synonym for this sense of determination is impulsion. An impulsion is a driving force that may originate from within a person or be the result of eternal forces. In this later sense of the word, human beings tend to follow their own wisdom, rely on their own understanding, and trust in their own knowledge. This human self-determination is at the very heart of the human dilemma, especially when it comes to being in a right relationship with God. Our innate tendency is to idolatry, to put finite things, including the self, in the place of the infinite God.

The Apostle Paul described our plight in his epistle to the Romans. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles” (Romans 1:18-22).

Although modern people are not inclined to worship idols made by human hands, the same idolatrous impulse is still at work in us. We are not inclined to honor God. We claim to be wise, but we are foolish. We are all too ready to exchange the truth about God for a lie. Our thinking about God can easily become futile and our senseless minds darkened. As a result, we become the objects of God’s wrath.

King Jehoiakim is a painful example of this human tendency. “Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and he took it from the chamber of Elishama the secretary; and Jehudi read it to the king and all the officials who stood beside the king. Now the king was sitting in his winter apartment (it was the ninth month), and there was a fire burning in the brazier before him. As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a penknife and throw them into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier. Yet neither the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words were alarmed, nor did they tear their garments. Even when Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them” (Jer. 36:21-25).

When the scroll, dictated by Jeremiah to his scribe, Baruch, was read in the king’s hearing, he had utter contempt for what God was revealing to him. God had spoken against Israel and Judah repeatedly through the prophet Jeremiah. God warned them of the disasters he intended to bring upon them. God hoped the Jews and their leaders would turn from their evil ways so that God might forgive their iniquity and sin, but they would not. They completely ignored the word of the LORD. King Jehoiakim embodied humanity’s stubborn and stiff-necked tendency. As the book of Proverbs says, “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death” (14:12).

As Christians, we might be inclined to respond to Jehoiakim’s contemptuous disobedience in the same way that the pharisee prayed in Luke 18:11. “God, I thank you, that I am not like other people.” But are we that much different from stiff-necked Jehoiakim? Again, the Apostle Paul describes the dilemma of Christians in his epistle to the Romans. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So, I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:15-24a).

Even believers in Jesus Christ are plagued by the same impulsion to self-determination that leads to folly. John Calvin, echoing Paul, described us as ignorant, slothful, and of a fickle disposition. We do not do what we want, but the very thing we hate. We can will what is right, but we cannot always do it. This is a terrible bondage, and no amount of self-determination can liberate us. We need a greater force to conquer our impulse towards evil.

This is exactly what God has done for us! There is a solution to the human and Christian dilemma. Jeremiah 31:31-34 describes God’s solution. What we need is a new covenant. The old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, with its ten commandments, failed in producing wisdom, righteousness, godliness, and the fear of the LORD in God’s people or in the larger world of humanity. The problem was that God’s law remained external. The old covenant was predicated upon our obedient response, and as we have seen, the tendency to idolatry and self-direction is too deep-seated in us. We cannot change from the outside in. We must change from the inside out. And this is what the new covenant promises.

“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:33-34). God says, “I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts. They shall know me. I will forgive them.” Notice carefully that God is the sole cause of change, the sole determiner of transformation. I will put… I will write… I will be… I will forgive…

You see, God is absolutely determined to be reconciled with us. God is determined to be our God. God is determined that we shall be God’s people. God is determined that we will know him. God is determined to forgive us and forget our sins.

And God has kept these covenant promises through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus was sinless. He kept the old covenant perfectly. He willingly took our guilt and our utterly helpless place on the cross. He willingly drank the cup of God’s wrath and judgment for human sin. He abandoned all self-determination and said to God, “Not what I want but what you want” (Mt. 20:39). And for our sake, God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

Friends, if you are in Christ, by grace through faith, God no longer sees you as guilty. God’s wrath is turned away from you. You have become righteous in God’s sight. So even when we are willfully disobedient like Jehoiakim or when we agonize with Paul about our experience of the abiding power of sin saying, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me?” then God says to us, “I have rescued you in Jesus Christ. I am writing my law in your heart. I am your God. You are my child. You know me and I know you. I forgive you.”

We will not be free from all the ills of this world until God’s kingdom comes, but whatever our failings may be, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is sufficient to make us white as snow in the sight of God. The challenge is to believe this and to trust in it despite all outward appearances. Like King David, we know our transgressions and our sins are ever before us (Ps. 51:3). But the holy God does not look on our sin anymore. Instead, God sees the new covenant that is totally dependent on his action in Christ. God sees Jesus’ perfect righteousness, not the filthy rags of our attempts at sanctification. And thank God this is true, for if God’s favor were dependent on our action, we would be utterly hopeless and lost for all eternity.

Brothers and sisters, we may not be like stiff-necked Jehoiakim cutting the scroll and burning it in the brazier, but we are like the wretched creatures Paul describes in Romans 7. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! We have a new covenant that depends solely on God. God is determined to be reconciled with us. God has done for us what we could not possibly do for ourselves through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are free in him and nothing can take our freedom away, not even our own sin. God is writing his law in us, making us his people, revealing himself to us, and forgiving our many failings.

All glory, laud, and honor to thee, Redeemer King. Alleluia! Amen!